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Pulse

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 760 ratings · 123 reviews

The stories in Julian Barnes' long-awaited third collection are attuned to rhythms and currents: of the body, of love and sex, illness and death, connections and conversations. Each character is bent to a pulse, propelled on by success and loss, by new beginnings and endings. In "East Wind" a divorced estate agent falls in love with a European waitress, but is tempted, des...more

Hardcover, 228 pages

Published January 6th 2011 by Jonathan Cape

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Feb 17, 2013 TD rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

+spoilers+

Words to interfere with

It may be the case that when a writer as renown as Barnes produces a collection of shorts, a straightforward amalgam of stories accrued over time no longer cuts the mustard. "Pulse" is a collection with its own structure, and I believe should be approached as a novelistic-like work in and of itself, in which the mutually affective relationship between component pieces aims to provoke in the reader a complex - at times paradoxical - experience.

Barnes divides his n...more

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Dec 23, 2011 Cheryl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary, literature, british, short-stories, e-book

I have come late to Julian Barnes, to my regret, but I’m glad to have finally arrived. His Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending was my introduction, save for some short stories I’d read here and there in the New Yorker and Granta. Some of the short stories in ‘Pulse’ were published between 2003 and 2011, and Sense of Ending was released in mid 2011. Some of these short stories are echoed in Sense of an Ending.

In “At Phil & Joanna’s 4: One in Five”, a character says “…I remember some intell...more I have come late to Julian Barnes, to my regret, but I’m glad to have finally arrived. His Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending was my introduction, save for some short stories I’d read here and there in the New Yorker and Granta. Some of the short stories in ‘Pulse’ were published between 2003 and 2011, and Sense of Ending was released in mid 2011. Some of these short stories are echoed in Sense of an Ending.

In “At Phil & Joanna’s 4: One in Five”, a character says “…I remember some intellectual on the radio discussing the start of the second World War, and coming to the conclusion that all you could say for certain was, ‘Something happened'." This was a key launch point for the story in Sense of an Ending, in which Adrian says, “But there is one line of thought according to which all you can truly say of any historical event — even the outbreak of the First World War, — is that ‘something happened’.”

"Something Happened" could be a good title for several Julian Barnes stories (but the title has been well used already by Joseph Heller).

In “Trespass”, first published in 2003 in the New Yorker, Geoff struggles to understand the disintegration of his relationship with Cath. He says to her, “I thought we were going to get married.” And she replies, “That’s why we aren’t,” When he asks her to explain she refuses. Why won’t she explain? “Because that’s the whole point. If you can’t see, if I have to explain — that’s why we’re not getting married.” This is redone again in Sense of an Ending, where Veronica says “You just don’t get it, do you? You never did, and you never will.’, and she refuses to explain further.

These are not sentimental stories yet they are often poignant (Pulse, Marriage Lines), and often funny too. Geoff in “Trespass” is trying to make a go of it with a new girlfriend. He becomes ever more pedantic but just can’t stop himself and it’s killing them. He really just doesn’t get it. He is unrelenting in his unwanted helpfulness. He and his girlfriend are avid hikers, but she is tiring of him. At one point toward the end of their time, he advises her not to walk in the bracken, or downwind of it for that matter, between August and October. — “you’re going to tell me why, aren’t you?” she says. So he proceeds to tell her about spores, which could get into lungs or stomach and become carcinogenic, and Lyme-disease-causing ticks; she would need to wear a face mask. “ ‘A face mask?’ ‘Respro makes one.’ Well, she’d asked, and she was getting the bloody answer."

There are several related “Phil & Joanna” short stories, which recount the witty banter amongst two married couples who get together several times for dinner, and those were fun reads. “Pulse” was especially good; it described simultaneously his perception of his parents’ wonderful marriage and his own failing marriage. Again he plays on the theme of perception vs versions of reality. And he does this again in a different way in “Limner’, the story of an itinerant portrait painter in the 1800s.

His prose is wonderful. He captures the intangibles and then presents them to us, and we feel a jolt of recognition. That is the best kind of writing.(less)

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Dec 21, 2012 Emmett rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, general-fiction

So natural, and so very human. To me this book spoke about reconciling differences -- in theme, in idea, in social situations. Perhaps because in life two contradictory things can happen at the same time. I fell in love with its perceptiveness: what it saw in a myriad of lives, or tried to see, and also what it tried to tease out.

Eagerness and introspection are not mutually exclusive, in Complicity. Pulse brings into question marriage and masquerade, meetings and how people fit into each other....more So natural, and so very human. To me this book spoke about reconciling differences -- in theme, in idea, in social situations. Perhaps because in life two contradictory things can happen at the same time. I fell in love with its perceptiveness: what it saw in a myriad of lives, or tried to see, and also what it tried to tease out.

Eagerness and introspection are not mutually exclusive, in Complicity. Pulse brings into question marriage and masquerade, meetings and how people fit into each other. Actually, I suspect the entire book is about the latter: about the friction and fluidity of human interactions, about progressive experiences.

I like the 'At Phil & Joanna's' stories the most. Barnes is most talented here in writing the natural spontaneity of conversations -- it's something I haven't seen in any other collection of stories, and the lack of 'who said this' and introspection tightens the focus upon the words uttered rather than the person. I could pick out certain people by the names, but they drift in and out of sight as talk goes on; I'm forced to imagine who said what, it feels like looking at the script of a radio show.

I expected this to be about contemporary, urban tales of connected people, but Barnes also explores exotic locations and time periods and shows how they gesture toward present times with the communion of feeling. This book is finely attuned to what makes the world turn as one walks along the pavement (ie the greatness of human experience to an individual), the conflict and dynamics of love and heartbreak, death, lust and intimacy. Barnes draws from a variety of situations and times, some more close to home and heart than others. Personally it worked both ways: Harmony was brilliant, but I think The Limner lacked its shine because I couldn't emphatise more with it. Perhaps this was some fault of my own, that I don't understand painters and painting and some types of people.

Certain things resonated very deeply with me, like a sudden light in the dark, truths I might not have known (being not very perceptive) if no one had pointed out to me:

"What do we look for in a partner? Someone like us, someone different? Someone like us but different, different but like us? Someone to complete us? Oh, I know you can't generalise, but even so. The point is, if we're looking for someone who matches us, we only ever think of their good matching bits. What about their bad matching bits? Do you think we're sometimes driven towards people with the same faults as we have?" (Pulse)(less)

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Apr 14, 2012 notgettingenough rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, modern-lit

I beg to differ from the opinions on the review pages of the English press, the kinds of things I guess one can predict about such a solid figure in the literary department. 'Literary pearls' not. 'The very best short fiction'. I don't think so. 'Masterclasses in the form'. Nup.

This collection is plain disappointing compared with as a fine modern exponent of the short story as, say, Michael Chabon. The observations on life are neither here nor there and delivered without either the wit or the hu...more

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May 10, 2011 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars

Julian Barnes is great company: bright, perceptive, gently biting, his fine mind looks at many differnt aspects of every day's contemporary life. He shares his inner thoughts without pretention nor heaviness. His description are right on the button: evocative, spiced with his brand of understated English humor as an undercurrent. Just delicious and wonderfully pertinent.

I prefered the second part of his set of stories, but, as it is in life with good and smart friends you love: you enjoy their c...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

“ ‘I can do active-aggressive if you’d prefer’” (91).
“Stop that, he said to himself. You aren’t allowed to be a sad person; you’re allowed to be sad” (94).
“The pattern of the jersey told you which island its owner came from; the buttons at the neck told you precisely which family they belonged to. It must have been like walking around dressed in your own postcode, he thought” (124).
“But he was not in charge of grief. Grief was in charge of him. And in the months and years ahead, he expected grie...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Joanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, short-stories

A quietly emotive collection of short stories.

I'm rather new to the genre, venturing a bit into short stories to add some variety to my reading, but this was a satisfying arrangement. The stories took a little while to warm up to, but my patience was paid off and Julian Barnes has me interested in reading his other works. This collection was balanced and interspersed with a keen sense of humour during the first part, which I was muddling through a bit but the meal bantering flowed very naturally...more

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May 22, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading Julian Barnes is a real pleasure and this book follows suit. First, I must thank Good Reads for sending me the release notice which I promptly went out and bought the book. As I was buying the book, I chatted with the sales person at a local bookstore, who is also a big Barnes fan, and she noted that of all the authors she wanted to hear give a reading, Barnes would be her top vote. Taking all this into consideration, I savoured the selection of 14 short stories. I love his novels but hi...more Reading Julian Barnes is a real pleasure and this book follows suit. First, I must thank Good Reads for sending me the release notice which I promptly went out and bought the book. As I was buying the book, I chatted with the sales person at a local bookstore, who is also a big Barnes fan, and she noted that of all the authors she wanted to hear give a reading, Barnes would be her top vote. Taking all this into consideration, I savoured the selection of 14 short stories. I love his novels but his short stories are particularly excellent and this book delivers.

The subject matter is his usual stock - love, getting old, friends, family and lovers. A sense of loss and melancholoy pervades almost all the stories. The last story, "Pulse" is the best of the lot. Two parallel stories intertwine themselves; the thirty-year old man, while dealing with his father's sudden loss of smell, see his mother slip away from a motor neuron disease while at the same time sees his marriage fall apart. It never crosses the sentimental side but just gives a glimpse of reality with nothing heroic. As noted in the New York Times review by Christopher Benfey, "what the characters mainly talk over in "Pulse" is what makes couples tick." The stories "Limner" and "Harmony" focus on the disabilities of blindness and deafness and one wonders who truly has the disability. Begging the question perhaps we all have some disability to deal with? The story "Carcassone" begins with the Italian Garibaldi spies a beautiful woman off the coast of Brazil, Jumps off and "gets the girl" in a bravado of romance. The die has been cast and then we learn that the famed lover goes on to other exploits.

The review in the Globe and Mail by Zsusi Gartner, suggested that Part Two, which are more period pieces are stronger than Part one, which is more about contemporary life. I heartily disagree as the hilarious " "At Phil and Joanna's", spans three dinner parties of old friends baring all through their drunken revelery. The parties are told in three parts and are such fun and the wit is so wickly enjoyable that this trio rates up there as some of his finest work. "East Wind" and " Marriage Lines" are simple observations on marriage that are painfully true. But not all are dire tales such as the fun story, "Sleeping with John Updike". The title itself wants the reader to read on and delivers with the two aging novelists "brag" about their pasts.

Sadly I wanted more but one must savour a writer as good as Barnes and wait for his next release.(less)

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Feb 25, 2011 Nigohosian rated it 4 of 5 stars

За първи път чета Барнс (но ще наваксам де ;). Забавлява ме толкова английския му хумор, особено в поредицата разказа "У Фил и Джоана". Другите са по-сериозни, с уж почти никакъв сюжет, но се хващат за някакви толкова човешки слабости и грешки, че няма как да не те стиснат леко за гърлото.
Още нещо трябва да кажа, като съвсем я довърших - Барнс май е откритието ми за последните няколко месеца (да, знам, че съм закъсняла). Освен това си мисля, че вероятно по-точно заглавие за поредицата разкази би...more

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Sep 04, 2012 Seth rated it 3 of 5 stars

There was absolutely nothing wrong with this collection of stories, but at the same time there was nothing terribly compelling about them. Although all the stories revolved around the driving force behing relationships, I felt like most of them only scratched the surface and left you wanting a little more. Individually, this might have been OK if the pieces joined together to make a full picture, but it didn't work out that way.

The nice part was that things ended on a high note. The final two st...more

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Jan 20, 2011 Bettie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Bettie by: Carey

Shelves: winter-20102011, shortstory-shortstories-novellas, published-2011, britain-england, lifestyles-deathstyles, gardening, food-glorious-food, teh-demon-booze, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, washyourmouthout-language, amusing, art-forms, knit-fic, midlife-crisis

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 11, 2011 Caren rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

Whatever Julian Barnes has to say, it is always well-said. This is a collection of short stories. Some I liked more than others, but always I appreciated Barnes' exquisite use of the English language. It is just an utter delight to revel in his turns of phrase and the precise way he can capture a sentiment. My favorites here were the episodes "At Phil & Joanna's' , which described dinner parties with the same group of friends over the course of a year. They were very British and so wryly hum...more

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Oct 16, 2011 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

cover Le Malade Imaginaire - Honore Daumier

sleeping w/john updike
36--in her view, everything WAS hopeless, but you just had to get on with it.
gardener's world
70--he: can we please not call it a water feature
she: ruskin always said he always worked better to the sound of running water
he: didn't it make him want to pee all the time?
she: why should it
he: because it does w/blokes. you might have to install a toilet feature
71--something about nurseries really got on his tits
79--at phil and joanna's.....more

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Feb 02, 2013 Mark added it

Shelves: literature

A collection of stories by one of my favorite living authors, and one of the very finest prose stylists I have ever read. This sampling is uneven, exploring love, sex, memory, relationships, trust, aging, and all the others things that "pulse" in us and between us, but when Barnes is on he is unmatchable. "East Wind," "Trespass," and "Complicity" are very good. "The Limner" and "Harmony" are not perfect but echt Barnesian explorations of history, art, psychology, and the mind, much like FLAUBERT...more

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Feb 02, 2012 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

Unlike the dismal exercise in sterility that was "The Sense of an Ending" (beloved by the Booker judges, but not by me), several of the stories in "Pulse" actually elicit an emotional response in the reader. I've always felt that Barnes's cleverness is his Achilles heel -- too often his writing feels like an exercise designed to demonstrate how accomplished he is, but remains devoid of emotion. Most of the stories in this collection manage to avoid this trap. A possible exception is the set of f...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is only the second book I've read by Barnes. The previous one was a slightly overlong but beautifully written meditation on death and posterity, 'Nothing To Be Frightened Of'. 'Pulse' is a collection of short stories, which is one of the reasons I was keen to read it (I love the short story form). It has been criticised for being an uneven collection, and this is true, but I don't think eveness is the point. I am not sure why the book is divided into two parts, but in the first part the sto...more

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Jun 29, 2012 Angel rated it 3 of 5 stars

i've long enjoyed barnes' fiction ... but in this collection, only one story really sparkled for me: "harmony." i would give it 4 - 5 stars and the rest of the collection 1 or 2. there was a lovely oliver sacks-ish, magical quality to the story of a fictional version of the famous dr. franz mesmer, who has taken on the case of curing a young, blind piano prodigy. the rest of the stories felt so weary, deflated, fairly cynical and cleverly hopeless, especially in their depiction of romantic relat...more

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Aug 12, 2011 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars

Yet another book that I did not realize consisted of short stories! I agree with Stewart -- these stories by and large did not resonate with me. Barnes is no Cheever here. I found a couple of the stories moving, but ended up skipping several others. The dinner party stories are cleverly written in the back-and-forth dialogue, but Stewart is right that they are very, very smug. In the end I felt like none of the stories had any fresh insights. I won't remember any of them two weeks from now.

Some...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Mauberley added it

Lesser Barnes is always much better than no Barnes at all. As a great admirer of the man's writing, I am always grateful for the opportunity to read something from the master's hand. However, honesty compels me to say that these do not represent Barnes' best work. The 'historical' pieces are surprisingly flat and the stories of loss and heartbreak with which the collection more often than not failed to move me. That said, the four evenings at Phil and Johanna's reveal an astonishing gift for dia...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Gan See Siong rated it 5 of 5 stars

I particularly like 'marriage lines'; you feel for the widower as he relives the moments he spent with his deceased wife on a resort island; the language is taut in the sense that each line is like poetry and conveyed the love and despair. I like too these few lines in 'Phil and Joanna's' "...and though hunger had been satisfied, some mild social addiction kept making hands reach out to snaffle another graph, crumble a landslide from the cliff face of cheese or pick a chocolate from a box..". Ju...more

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Nov 02, 2011 Ronan Noane K rated it 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars would have been more correct.
still a very nice read.

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Jul 05, 2011 Alex Roberts rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not surprisingly, a refined and often moving collection from the always interesting Mr. Barnes.
Some will no doubt suggest that the interspersed 4-part roundtable discussion titled "At Phil & Joanna's" involves more than a bit of showing off, but the quicksilver Brit wit displayed by the characters seems a recognizable national trait. The title story is a touching depiction of a young man's relationship with his aging parents. Through the smallest of observations, and the sparest of language...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Oria rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book contains 14 stories (I wonder if the author was superstitious) about life, choices, love and marriage. I was attracted to this book by the title – it seemed like an interesting name for a book.
While at the bookstore I started reading the first story, East Wind, about Vernon, a late thirties divorcee, who falls in love with Andrea, an East European waitress. There was something funny and likable about Vernon, and I decided to take the book home and continue reading.

What I really liked a...more The book contains 14 stories (I wonder if the author was superstitious) about life, choices, love and marriage. I was attracted to this book by the title – it seemed like an interesting name for a book.
While at the bookstore I started reading the first story, East Wind, about Vernon, a late thirties divorcee, who falls in love with Andrea, an East European waitress. There was something funny and likable about Vernon, and I decided to take the book home and continue reading.

What I really liked about this book was the way the author managed to infuse the stories with humor but also with sadness at the same time, a notable accomplishment which is tricky to achieve within the same story. There’s also a bit of cynical witticism in the “At Phil and Joanna’s” stories (there were four), in which a group of friends gather for dinner and some verbal banter. The dialogue is entertaining and well written, the topics ranging from politics and grammar to sex and religion to name just a few.

Another story I particularly liked was "The Limner". I must confess I had never heard the word before (and that is yet another reason why I liked this book – finding new words) and had to look it up in the dictionary. The limner, Mr. Wadsworth, is a traveling portrait artist. He can’t speak or hear, due to a childhood illness, but that doesn’t mean he’s dumb, as some of his customers seem to think. Attention to detail is observed not only when painting, but also when dealing with others and he manages to form an accurate opinion of the people he meets. This is one of my favorite passages from the story:

“The limner had shown the collector of customs some miniatures of children, hoping to change his mind, but Tuttle merely shook his head. Wadsworth was disappointed, partly for reasons of money, but more because his delight in painting children had increased as that in painting their progenitors had declined. Children were more mobile than adults, more deliquescent of shape, it was true. But they also looked him in the eye, and when you were deaf you heard with your eyes. Children held his gaze, and he thereby perceived their nature. Adults often looked away, whether from modesty or a desire for concealment; while some, like the collector, stared back challengingly, with a false honesty, as if to say, Of course my eyes are concealing things, but you lack the discernment to realise it. Such clients judged Wadsworth’s affinity with children proof that he was as deficient in understanding as the children were. Whereas Wadsworth found in their affinity with him proof that they saw as clearly as he did.”

In "Carcassonne", the author explores the concept of marriage, how couples meet and what keeps them together over the years. Is it passion, like the type Garibaldi and his wife Anita felt the first time they laid eyes on each other, or is it something more subdued, like the man who had met his wife at an office party and when asked what did he feel when he saw her, said “I thought she was very nice”. Do couples without children have more chances of staying together, unencumbered by responsibilities and worn out by worries, and what about gay couples? Questions, musings, experiences shared. No miraculous recipe for a long, happy marriage, only doubt and various perspectives – it’s all a roll of the dice.

There were a couple of stories I didn’t care much about. While I had no complaints about the writing style, which by the way, seems to flow nicely enough, those stories in themselves fell short of interesting. But then it’s almost inevitable for this to happen in a book of short stories.
An entertaining read, quite different from the books I usually pick. I have to admit I was more excited about this book when I finished it but for some reason I postponed writing a review and in time my enthusiasm decreased considerably, which is a shame, really...
(less)

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Jul 29, 2011 mstan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: british, short-stories, src-summer-2011

Barnes's short stories in this collection are a little uneven. I did enjoy the ridiculous dinner conversation chapters that many others seem to dislike, largely because they remind me of some conversations my (and I say this with affection) annoying friends and I have had as well... but there are a couple of stories where the elegiac quality of Barnes's writing overwhelms me. My favourite story is the understated 'Pulse', which surprised me by making me suddenly quite teary with its description...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Beni Morse rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this because I'd enjoyed Barnes' 'Sense of Ending' and some reviewers had indicated this collection of stories was in a similar vein.

It's a mixed bag really. Some of the stories are lovely and like Sense of Ending, tinged with loss and a keen sense of mortality. It is worth getting this book for the story 'Marriage Lines' alone: a bleak and poignant story about a widower returning to a Scottish island where he'd taken annual holidays with his recently deceased wife. The landscapes in this...more

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Oct 31, 2011 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While I didn't love this collection as much as I did The Lemon Table, much of what I wrote in that review applies to this book as well.

Knowing that Barnes' wife of many years died of a brain tumor in late 2008 (this book is dedicated, very simply, to her: "For Pat"), I couldn't help picking out what almost seem like meditations within some of the stories, especially of what brings and keeps (or doesn't keep) couples together, and that of grief.

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Aug 06, 2011 Chet Jones rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A collection of short stories: some very good, a couple not so good and a couple just excellent. Taken as a whole, it's a collection that I can recommend to anyone. Anyone especially with the intellect and dexterity to keep up with Mr. Barnes.

I confess I was hoping for a read that was up to "Flaubert'S Parrot" and some of the wit and writing does comes up to that memorable novel. I'll simply put it: read the short stories first, then the novel.

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Feb 06, 2011 Simon Tesler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Typically elegant and well-constructed tales from a master of the form, but too many perhaps set in Barnes' own mileu of the comfortably well-heeled upper middle class meeja types. I imagine the gratingly self-absorbed Phil & Joanna dinner party dialogues are more transcription than invention. Instead, Barnes is at his best when out of his (or indeed our) comfort zone, with more poignant tales of love and loss. Standouts are the opener East Wind, ramblers' tale Trespass, heartbreaking Marria...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Kathleen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: england, fiction

Julian Barnes, where have you been all of my life? Actually, I did read The Porcupine a while back and it made a big impression on me. I am glad to come back to him and will be looking to read more. This group of stories is about relationships, the second group strongly centered around the senses. There is a lot of heart in his writing and truly "speaks to the human condition."

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Jul 21, 2011 Alison rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, short-stories, realistic, good-for-adult-book-clubs, fiction

Highly enjoyable and vibrant short story collection. Perceptive, intricate, and very funny. Barnes writes about relationships with ease and elegance. The witty "Phil and Joanna" stories were an upbeat contrast to the more melancholy "Pulse" and "Marriage Lines", but even the more melancholy were full of life. As these collections tend to go, several of the stories were much better than others, but I won't tell my favorites for fear of poisoning the well. Before Pulse, I'd only read Flaubert's Pa...more

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About Julian Barnes

Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer of postmodernism in literature. He has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize--- Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005), and won the prize for The Sense of an Ending (2011). He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.

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Quotes from Pulse

“You would think, wouldn’t you, that if you were the child
of a happy marriage, then you ought to have a better than
average marriage yourself – either through some genetic
inheritance or because you’d learnt from example? But it
doesn’t seem to work like that. So perhaps you need the
opposite example – to see mistakes in order not to make
them yourself. Except this would mean that the best way for
parents to ensure their children have happy marriages
would be to have unhappy ones themselves. So what’s the
answer?” — 6 people liked it

“When we're onstage we're not literature, we're sitcom. You have to have catchphrases.” — 4 people liked it

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